by S T Branton
Of course. I will do my best to assist you.
“Well, before I picked you up from Frank, Deacon and I cut through Central Park with that Trent guy, and we ran into a whole herd of these Marked centaurs.”
Hmm, yes. A ruthless, bloodthirsty people. I trust you made short work of them.
“You know it,” I said with a touch of pride. “But I noticed that they turned into regular people instead of ash. Kind of freaky, right?”
Did it bother you to see them return to their former selves?
I sighed as I turned that question over in my head. “Well…shouldn’t it? Don’t get me wrong; I understand that this kind of thing is inevitable, and maybe in some twisted way, it’s almost for the best. Unless we could figure out a way to restore the Forgotten without killing them, if that’s even possible.”
Such a solution would doubtlessly be ideal. I think, however, that it is only applicable to the future. The immediate crisis must be dealt with, by any means necessary.
“Yeah. And that means I’ve got to hunt all three of these stooges down.” Again, the memory of Rocca surfaced: the broad, sharp horns, the chain held up toward the widening portal in the sky. “I know you said you weren’t concerned about Rocca or Beleza, but I’m not convinced they won’t turn into trouble.”
That, I cannot say for sure. Both harbor burning ambitions for different brands of conquest, and now that they have the chance to seize control of a whole world for themselves, I believe those ambitions have been fully unleashed. Rocca is stubborn and proud in her own way, and she revels in the strength of her minions. With an army behind her, she has always been a formidable opponent, though others may be smarter or more devious.
“There’s something to be said for brute force.” I patted my biceps, mostly joking.
This is true. But do not sell yourself short, Victoria. Your mind is not nearly as dull as it was when first we met.
I rolled my eyes. “Anyway. What I’m getting at is that I don’t want to write these two off just because they aren’t Tahn. That seems like it could be a huge mistake.”
It is wise of you to wonder and to ask. The gods, and the Forgotten in general, are fickle, unpredictable things. It is true that certain gods and their Apprenti display specific characteristics that are considered defining, but because of their inherently mystical nature, it is nearly impossible to predict for sure how a member of the Forgotten might react in any case. This includes the sudden acquisition of new territory, for which they would likely fight to the death.
“Uh huh.” I stifled the urge to tell him to get to the point. The subject matter of Marcus’s mini-lecture was critically interesting, but his delivery could have used some polish. I vaguely regretted activating his “Roman oration” mode, but it was necessary. The class was worth enduring if it taught me even one important thing about what we were facing. Maybe Rocca and Beleza were just Tahn’s henchmen—or maybe they weren’t. I couldn’t afford to assume anything.
I kept in the shadows of buildings and the mouths of alleys, relying on my nectar-improved vision to guide me through the early-morning darkness. The street lights were all out, as well as most of the business lights, making stealth more of a precaution than a necessity. Still, the night had seemed to go on forever, and I didn’t want the dawn to catch me unaware. I was also on the lookout for any other survivors who might have ventured out while the sun was down to scrounge up food or other supplies.
“I know there must be people all over,” I murmured. “No way the whole damn city got out. If nothing else, tons would have been trapped inside the city limits by traffic alone.” Not to mention the vast numbers of New Yorkers who didn’t own a car at all, but I figured that point would probably be lost on Marcus. “Did they just all clear out of downtown, or what?”
I commend you for sending those captives out, said Marcus. It was, in my opinion, the wise and compassionate decision. Your assessment of their chances for survival was very astute.
“Deacon helped a lot. I’m glad he got out too. I think getting stabbed in the back by his friend and then seeing him die like that… it messed him up, but he couldn’t show it in the moment. I hope he gets some time to process all that once things are less crazy out there.”
To my surprise, Marcus said nothing. I sensed that he was holding back, exercising restraint for both our sakes. I knew what he wanted to say nonetheless.
“Listen, I know it’d be smart to hit the road. We could turn back right now, grab Maya and Frank, and meet up with Deacon and Jules outside somewhere. Honestly, I bet we’d all be better for it.” I sighed. “But I can’t.”
I know. That is why we are where we are.
“Yeah, it is. I can’t help it. I wasn’t this way when all this started, but now I can’t see any other way to be. What kind of victory is it if we don’t do everything in our power to make sure it’s not empty?”
Let me tell you a story, Victoria. It is about the old times, about a warrior who was great but brash, strong but proud. The many victories he had won on the fields of battle had perhaps gone to his head, such that he often saw fit to ignore the advice of his counsel, despite the fact that the advisers in his camp were the best in the empire. Good and true men he had by his side, but the warrior trusted nothing more than his own gut instinct. When war broke out, he leapt into battle without fear and without the odds in his favor.
“Let me guess: his counsel was right, and he got completely obliterated for being an idiot,” I said.
He was never obliterated, as you say. Whether it was skill, or luck, or some of each may never be truly known. But eventually, the tide of battle claimed a great number of sacrifices, drowning friends, compatriots, even family in its crimson waters. He led his last soldiers in a desperate charge against the mounting enemy, and that hungry tide grew redder yet. The ground of that battlefield was barren for generations, unable to grow a single shred of life where so much blood had spilled. But the battle was won in the end, and the warrior went on to claim glory for his empire.
“Who was this guy?” I asked. “Did you know him?”
A few moments of silence passed.
His name was Marcus Victorius.
I burst out laughing before I could help myself. “What! ‘Do as I say, not as I do,’ huh? You’re a real mystery sometimes, you know that?”
I crossed the street at Sixtieth, heading in the direction of Columbus Circle. We were approaching the heart of Midtown, and I was expecting an uptick in activity. Sure enough, I started to see shapes materializing in the distance—a lot of shapes. The first thing I did was shut my mouth.
I see they are not giving ground. This goes against both your nature and the methods that have served you well in the immediate past, but I would caution you to avoid needless skirmishes. Your destination is too important to risk drawing excess attention.
I nodded silently. The Gladius Solis never left my grip, but the blade was stowed away in the aether, or wherever the hell it went when it was off. I slowed my pace too, taking careful, soft steps. Every so often, I heard the noise of a scuffle not far off. Were they fighting each other, or other survivors? Something metal scraped along the pavement, piercing the blackness with a spray of orange sparks. It sounded heavy as hell.
I do not like the sound of that.
Just what I wanted to hear. Up ahead, a pair of eyes illuminated in a pool of shadow, panning their surroundings. I ducked into the recessed entryway of a bank, pressing myself up against the wall. The corner smelled like piss and stale cigarettes—a former camping spot for the homeless. I held my breath and waited.
The eyes made two circuits back and forth. Then they disappeared. I didn’t breathe again until I was at least thirty feet away.
The scraping came once more. No sparks this time, but the chain had changed positions. It was behind me and gradually approaching.
Keep moving forward. If you must, turn and face it, but do not invite a premature confrontation.
He was ri
ght, but it wasn’t easy to keep my eyes focused in front of me. I wanted to look over my shoulder real bad, just to see if I could catch a glimpse of it. If it jumped me, though, I might be screwed. Of course, if it jumped me with my back turned, I might be extra screwed.
The shapes in the street grew more distinct and louder. From this distance, I made out the silhouettes of another gang of satyrs, kicking debris and spitting at each other. Their harsh, braying laughter carried to my ears on a chill wind. No doubt they were armed to the teeth like their brethren before them.
I resolved to avoid them if I could.
That scraping sound felt like it was haunting me somehow. The fan of sparks reappeared, and much to my chagrin, it was startlingly close. “This thing’s not going away,” I told Marcus softly. “I’m turning.” I thought I could see something walking in the deepest part of the shadows, an upright, humanoid figure.
Marcus grunted with distaste in my ear.
This one.
“Which one?” I frowned, confused. Then the figure stepped into range of my vision, and all my confusion melted away. He looked a little different than when I’d last seen him in Palo Alto, but the sunglasses were still there, and the bald head. He was covered up in a long black coat, which struck me as a little odd. I would’ve thought that a demon who habitually broke out of Hell didn’t care about a little cold weather.
It seems that your hunch was correct, Marcus observed. And I, on the contrary, appear to have given Abraxzael too much credit. He has responded with the rest.
“Are you sure?” I wrapped my fingers around the Gladius Solis without drawing. My last encounter with Brax had been confrontational, but not overly hostile—and he had let me live. Maybe he was there to talk.
Brax’s advance didn’t falter or slow in the slightest. His expression, or what I could see of it around the glasses, remained unsettlingly blank. The chains still shackled to his wrists grated against the pavement, scattering sparks.
“Long time no see,” I said, holding my ground. “You picked a real weird time for a rematch, man.”
No response. Brax took a couple more steps, and then his back foot fell back. This close, it was obvious that although he looked at me, he wasn’t really seeing me. The chain brands snaked down his neck, over his arms. Their hue shifted and boiled like molten lava.
“Brax? Don’t tell me you don’t remember me.” I kept my tone light and teasing. “I thought I got a few good hits in last time.”
His face twitched. A slow smile curled its way across his lips, crossing into a sneer at the last second. His fingers tensed. That was when I drew my sword. The light from the blade cast his face in a fierce, dancing glow.
“Yeah, I remember you,” he said. “But in a second, it’s not going to matter.”
His arms surged forward, and the chains on his wrists snapped toward my face. I leaned back at the waist, and the end of a chain passed over my head, gouging into the concrete.
I straightened up and grimaced, adjusting my hold on the hilt of the sword. “This isn’t how I wanted to play this, but it’s a game I know well. Are you sure this is what you want?”
He struck out with the other chain. “Are you gonna shut up on your own, or do I have to kill you to make it happen?” Reeling his weapons back in, his smile widened. “I’m cool either way.” Gripping the heavy links against his palm, he wound up for a third attempt. He wasn’t pulling any punches.
The dude was trying to kill me.
“This is messed up,” I said. “But that’s not gonna stop me from wiping the floor with your face.”
He laughed, a real belly laugh, showing all his teeth. “You’re welcome to try, god-hunter.”
Chapter Nineteen
Arrogant as always, Marcus muttered. I suppose we will have to teach him a lesson that sticks this time. Even though he had no corporeal form, tension radiated from his voice. I stepped to the side, and Brax mirrored my motions, still building up his next attack. The end of the hammer began to helicopter in a circle behind him. Each glimpse of its gargantuan shape reminded me of how much it weighed, and how one big hit could lay me out no problem. I doubted the nectar from Carcerum would be enough to save me from a crushed skull.
“What’s this hesitation?” Brax asked, lifting an insolent eyebrow. “You were so confident a moment ago. Could it be that you were only bluffing?”
He launched the weapon in a sweeping horizontal arc, leveled perfectly with my neck. The draft created by its sheer mass blew through my hair and buffeted my face. A searing heat slammed into my cheek. For a second, I swore I was breathing lava. My whole chest seized up, and my eyes squeezed shut on their own.
Brax laughed again. “I always wondered if you could really stand the heat.”
Do not let this cretin make a mockery of Carcerum! Marcus demanded with a vigor I hadn’t heard from him in a long while. He is not worthy to gaze upon the Gladius Solis.
“But I can cut him with it, right?” My misgivings about the encounter hadn’t gone away, not by a long shot. So far, the dude wasn’t making the greatest case for himself. Killing him still didn’t seem like the proper solution in light of our history, but if he refused to stand down, I wasn’t opposed to roughing him up some.
Is that said in jest, Victoria? This Asphodelian rat stands no chance.
The hammer burned through the darkness between us like a comet, forcing me to dance backward to avoid getting caught by its sheath of fire. I parried the blow with the edge of my sword, my knuckles white on the hilt. I had hoped the Gladius Solis might simply bite his stupid hammer into pieces, but the handle didn’t give.
“Cheap,” I told him, smirking. “Where’d you get that thing?”
He bore down hard on me, his hammer locked against my sword. His shadow loomed, and when he was lit from below that way, he looked like a tried and true demon. Months ago, I would have been scared. Now, I was mostly just annoyed, except that the sword was slipping a bit, inching toward me.
“I tore it from the midst of the trials that forged me to be stronger than you can imagine.” The cockiness in Brax’s countenance had been replaced with grave determination. “Glad you like it. It’ll be the last thing you ever see.”
“Yeah, right.” I gritted my teeth and dug in at an angle, resisting his downward pressure with all my might. The warmth from Kronin’s legendary weapon spread in tendrils up my arms, into my chest, and down through my ribcage. The skin on my arms and hands glowed faintly, as though it were being illuminated from within. Flecks of fire flew off the sword’s honed edge as it slowly, slowly gained ground. “You think… I’m going to be beaten… by a guy who wears sunglasses at two in the morning?”
Brax scowled. He held his hammer even for a few more seconds, then abruptly lifted it away. I pitched forward toward the street, the sword jerking down, just barely managing to stop my fall.
Look up, Victoria!
The hammer whistled down at me, its silhouette looking like a sun in full eclipse. My split-second dodge brought with it the acrid smell of burning hair. A wisp of smoke curled up from my singed ends.
“I can’t help but feel like this is getting kind of personal.” Taking advantage of the hammer’s ponderous attack speed, I darted in under Brax’s uplifted arms and jabbed at him with the tip of my blade. His coat took the brunt of it, peeling away from his skin, smoldering at the edges. Brax jumped back. A feral hiss leapt from his throat.
“Maybe I misjudged you,” he admitted, lunging in with another huge swing. The hammer soared, its own heatwave trailing behind. The top of the striking surface grazed my clavicle, which stung and blistered immediately. “That’s fine. I won’t make that mistake again.”
“You won’t get another chance.” I relegated the pain to a lockbox in the back of my mind to be dealt with later. On his next swing, I jumped up and pushed my feet off the handle of his hammer, knocking Brax off balance at the same time that I gained some air on him. The Gladius Solis came down in an overhead cleave
, slicing open his coat diagonally from shoulder to side. He stumbled, trying to recover his equilibrium, as a thin seam of dark blood opened up along the line of the cut. I moved to slash a second time on the same exposed path.
Brax threw up his arm to block me. He twisted, and his other hand grabbed for my arm. Somehow, the bastard found just enough purchase to mess with my strike, which ended up biting into the outside of his forearm and shredding the sleeve of the coat. He bared his teeth. Even with the full fury of the Gladius Solis beaming straight into his face, the shades remained impenetrable.
“Say ‘uncle’ and I’ll stop,” I told him. The blade twisted, turning the edge of the sleeve into a column of black ash. Brax answered by spitting at my face.
“You roam the streets a free god-slayer, and they think I’m the one who belongs in Asphodel?” His grip tightened on my arm until I could feel his fingers pressuring the bone. “Which one of us is the infidel?”
“The one who’s a second from losing his whole fucking arm.” I bent my knee, shoved my foot into the center of his chest, and discovered that Brax was built like a shithouse made of angry bricks. He seized my ankle and tried to flip me onto the street. I took a shot at him with the sword. To protect his head, he snatched at it with his other hand.
Then he screamed. The fabric of the glove he’d been wearing disintegrated under the Gladius Solis, leaving him with a blistering mark in the shape of its cutting edge seared into his flesh. He shook off the glove’s remains. The sleeve I’d ripped open flapped backward. Brax stood hunched over on the yellow line. His good hand clutched the burnt one. The dome of his head was facing me.
I raised my sword at him. He had no idea, enthralled in the agony as he was. His broad shoulders heaved, and droplets of sweat spattered the ground in front of him. “It’s either him or me,” I whispered. “Him or me.”
Victoria, wait!
I paused, bewildered. Was I hearing things? “Seriously, Marcus? You were the one who wanted to teach him a permanent lesson ten minutes ago.”
